I think the issue has more to do with siloed communication than with how people want to interact with each other. Take the Google Hangouts app for example. It

I think the issue has more to do with siloed communication than with how people want to interact with each other. Take the Google Hangouts app for example. It uses a similar approach to what the post advocates: click on a person, then select text or gchat as a medium. But I don't really care if I'm using text or gchat, I care that the recipient gets the message that I send without a duplicate message arriving in another medium. Which is how Apple messages works within their closed garden, but it's not going to find my friends on email or Facebook message or gchat or whatever other medium. So we go to a dedicated texting app or dedicated email app because we assume the recipient is going to get the message from that medium in a convenient and timely fashion. Whatsapp, Snapchat, FB Messenger, Hangouts, etc etc all contribute to the app-centric model by creating new silos. See http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/.